Join the Italian Food, Wine, and Travel Group (#ItalianFWT)  on March 4th as we virtually return to Italy’s southernmost wine region, and the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea – Sicily!  We’ll be posting and chatting about our discoveries on Saturday March 4th, 2017.

Italian Food Wine and Travel is a bloggers group that focuses monthly on a particular region of Italy showcasing our experiences with the food, wine or travel from that region.

We last visited Sicily a couple of years ago.

Ah, but virtual travel can be just like the real thing – sometimes you want to go back to discover something new you weren’t able try that first go round.  Perhaps there was a dish you didn’t get too (e.g…I never got around to trying Lampredotto while in Florence last fall!), a food and wine pairing you’ve been wanting to try, or maybe a wine, or a different style of wine from island.

You get the picture!

Sicily – An Overview:

Sicily has a rich viticultural heritage.  Sicilians have been making wine since before Greeks conquered the island in 750 B.C.  In fact, Sicily has more vineyards than any other region in Italy; it also grows more grapes.

Much of its recent wine history has been defined by two things: fortified Marsala (a boom-and-bust cycle whose heyday was arguably the 1800s) and cheap blending wine sold to various regions of Italy and elsewhere in Europe. (Source)

But in the last 30 years the wine industry in Sicily has gone through a transformation – from producing bulk wines mostly through cooperatives in the 60’s,  to now being considered one of the most exciting wine regions in Europe!

A focus on quality over quantity, native grapes and a variety of microclimates is reinvigorating this rugged island at the center of Italian winemaking. – Wine Enthusiast

Gastronomically speaking,  Sicily manifest diverse culinary influences, but at its core, Sicily’s ancient cuisine relies on a few key home-grown ingredients: shellfish and citrus, tuna and swordfish, pistachios, almonds and ricotta.

For more information, check out this introduction to Sicily provided by Lonely Planet.

If you have a blog and would you like to join us, just send an email to me at: martindredmond@gmail.com. I’ll be looking for blog post titles no later than Tuesday, February 28th. Our posts go live  no later than 7am EST on Saturday, March 4th.  Our chat on Twitter using the #ItalianFWT hashtag happens from 8-9am PST/11a-12p EST.

If you’re not able to participate in this one.  No worries.  Here is a list of forthcoming events:

• April 2017 (hosted by Jennifer Gentile Martin of Vino Travels) Italian Easter Wines & Food
• May 2017 (hosted by Gwendolyn Lawrence Alley of Art Predator) Italian Sparkling Wines.
• June 2017 (hosted by Susannah Gold of Avvinare) Italian Sweet Wines
• July 2017 – TBD
• August 2017 (hosted by Jason Or Jill Barth of L’Occasion) Alpine Regions of Italy

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